so darkness i became
by TribalGirl
Summary: He will become one of the masses, another dreary stick figure trudging along this mortal coil - and then he laughs, harsh and terrible, because what has he been doing already?


**Inspired by this drawing: tanssintaivaankannenalla. tumblr post /51018271172**

**Thanks to Quiet .Flight .Risk for beta'ing.**

* * *

He is born incandescent in a moment of breathtaking wonder, an instant in which all the world seems to spin into shape, lining up clear and smooth like a harmony from a crystal bell.

The creation of an angel is always a beautiful thing.

There is no one to give him orders, but the directions are wired into his being. He is a guardian, made to watch over one human life at a time. He cannot permanently shape anyone's destiny, but he will be there to offer encouragement, guidance, and a peaceful departure from the world.

He is still glowing with life and hope, with that assurance of the world's beauty that comes with divinity. Later he will look back on this era of youth with a bitter envy of his former self.

•

His first charge is a girl in Italy. He feels it the moment she is born, like a light snapping on in the midst of darkness, pointing him where to go. She is ragged and lives in filth and yet smiles, with her mouthful of teeth growing in at wrong angles. He loves her dearly in the way only an angel can, sending her silent waves of reassurance and affection from his disguise as a painter living near her dilapidated house.

The plague claims her before she is eight years old. He sits by her bedside, unnoticed, and holds her hand as the light leaves her eyes. In the moments before she dies, she looks up at him and smiles - at him, at the wings no one but she can see, a face full of trust and benign acceptance. Then the breath trickles out of her lungs.

That day is when the first cracks start to appear in his idealistic illusion.

•

There are stories among the humans of an angel coming to take you away when you die. Little do they know that their escort will be not some mysterious faceless apparition, but someone who has been beside them their whole life, in the background, unnoticed. Somehow they are never surprised, when they look up for the last time and see the wings spreading like a shield from the back of someone they thought they knew.

He comes to cherish that last look. Each death leaves him a little more broken, the world a little bit darker, but the look of serene acceptance helps lift his spirits a little. He holds that trust to his heart as each light fades, and it alleviates the pain somewhat, but cannot take it away.

They all die young. Their lives go out like snuffed candles before they can fully see the world for what it truly is.

•

Alcohol, he finds, is a very good way to dull the link between watcher and ward. It is the height of disobedience to be a guardian angel who does not guard, but his hopes for the world are rotting away before his eyes. He will hide away in the nooks and crannies of the world for the thirty years it takes - or twenty, or ten, or five - and then, as the link grows inexorably stronger in the months leading up to the death, he will give in to the tugging. He will stay by his ward in the last hours, in the shadows, and send their soul on its way.

Drowning out the signal becomes easier the more and more time goes on. The bottle in his hand goes from being a tool for escape to being a cherished friend.

•

It begins like any of the others: the soft glow of a life flaring into existence, tugging him towards it just as he is still reeling from the last one. The future of this new soul flashes before his eyes - twenty-six, twenty-seven years. Barely a heartbeat. He's getting sick of watching them all die young in a cruel world, and so he ignores it.

•

Unrest is brewing in Paris by the time he returns resignedly, prepared for the coming death he will have to oversee, and the resulting pain. (It never gets easier, somehow -) There are whispers of revolution, talk of the old liberty, equality and fraternity. The same words that brought them the terror of the guillotine. They never learn, do they?

Even without the foreknowledge regarding his duties, he would easily be able to guess the cause of his charge's death. So he stares into his wineglass and meditates on the futility of hope, the pointless idealism of men, and the annoyance of the smell rising from a rubbish heap outside a window.

A voice asks him his name. He looks up, and has the sensation of stepping into overly bright sunlight.

"Grantaire," he manages as a reply, plucking the name from some long-dead neighbor living in the back of his memory. The name tastes unfamiliar, as all the previous aliases have, but it won't take long to break in.

"Grantaire," repeats the youth above him - Enjolras, his name is Enjolras, and he glows with a fire of determination that Grantaire has rarely seen before, and he's going to die. "Are you here for the meeting?"

Well, he has to find a way of keeping close to his charge. "I suppose I am," he replies, and grins crookedly, and wonders how a human soul can be so bright. "Don't expect me to agree with everything that is said, however."

Enjolras sighs and looks at him skeptically and moves away, leaving the words "as long as you don't cause trouble" dropped onto the table like an afterthought.

There are others, too, more names to be learned and friendships to be made and deaths he will soon have to witness, and then the meeting begins, quietly and unofficially.

They speak of change and progress, of course. The same concepts he has heard parroted over and over, not only in the past few days but all throughout history, passed on and on from one failed light to another. He resists the urge to correct them at the moment, and instead listens quietly at the back, listens to Enjolras most of all. Not to his words - the words are the same futile idealism that the world has chewed up time and time again - but to the fervor with which he says them, the confidence and ardent passion and sheer force of belief. Enjolras' soul, already a beacon, turns into a sun when he speaks of liberty and progress, his radiance fanned into a blaze.

Grantaire sits and takes this in, and something inside of him aches with a hollow pain.

•

It's only a while later that he realizes why such beautiful light can be so painful. Enjolras reminds him of himself, he thinks with a twisted smile. He looks the way Grantaire felt when he was still newly created, still brimming with the radiant belief that mankind was good and the world could be bettered. The reminder hurts, like sticking a finger into a bullet wound.

But that radiance is still so beautiful, and that glowing soul still so alluring. Such sheer confidence and elation are marvelous things to watch, and so Grantaire returns day after day, despite the pain of the past.

•

Enjolras looks at him with disdain, with pity, with frustration that he cannot make the effort to be a better person. Grantaire wishes he could see him for who he is, see that although he is battered and imperfect he is still an angel, full of burning power that smolders quietly below the surface but that can be stoked into a blaze at any moment -

•

It begins -

It begins quietly.

Such a complex thing begins with something as simple as the light from a window catching the side of Enjolras' face, momentarily, so that the radiance without matches the radiance within. A single turn of the head and then it's gone, but it calls attention to the curve of his cheekbone, his full lips, the fine lines in his neck -

The pattern of light stays in Grantaire's eyes like an imprint upon his retina. He traces over the glowing lines of Enjolras' face in his mind, absently, over and over and hardly realizing it.

•

Or perhaps -

- such a simple thing begins with something as complex as the expression on Enjolras' face when he thinks no one can see him, the way he looks at his friends in private. His thoughts are then tattooed on his face - what if, what if we lose, what if we die, they would all follow me to their doom, dead because of me -

and it's worse because that is precisely what Grantaire knows will happen. He has no comfort to offer, and yet he wishes he could do so. Wishes he could fold Enjolras into the embrace of his wings and whisper to him - _it's all right, this is a choice they have made, you have done what you could and you will do what you can_ -

It is in the nature of a guardian angel to want to protect his charge, after all.

•

And so it goes. Paris simmers and whispers, the end of a life draws closer, and Grantaire revolves around Enjolras like a moon in orbit, pulled in by him without knowing why.

He ponders once on the way light shines from Enjolras' hair, from his eyes, from his soul, and the way it reminds him of an angel. The word nephilim floats across his consciousness - offspring of a human and an angel, beautiful and terrible with a foot in each world. He thinks about the possibility, and then he thinks about angels falling in love with humans, and his mind momentarily becomes a whirling fog. When it clears, there is one cold answer left, and he laughs and laughs and laughs until his voice cracks.

At least there's a reason now. Nothing outwardly has changed - he still wanders the streets of Paris and learns its underground, still drinks and drinks to dull the impending visions of bullets and a blond head that will not bow even in death. Still stares at Enjolras from the dark corner of the room and soaks up his being. But inside of him there is now a heavy knowledge and a whirlwind confusion.

Angels have fallen in love with humans before. It may be rare, but it has been known to happen. But for a guardian angel to fall in love with his charge - a man who is doomed to fall among the others as their mayfly lives are snuffed out - what then? Logically, in the part of his brain moved by divine faith, he feels shame in these feelings - the bond between watcher and ward is a sacred thing, not to be sullied by such a mundane thing as romantic attraction -

But the other part of him, that revels in laughter and a good wine and the company of friends, wonders what greater bond there could be than to love a person body and soul. This is the human part of him.

Why is there a human part?

The world pitches and blurs around him, and he thinks it might be the wine, but he is hardly drunk enough.

•

He only fully realizes what is happening the night after Enjolras takes particular offense to one of Grantaire's jests, and stalks over to him and asks him to leave if he can't be serious. He is close enough to be blowing warm breath against Grantaire's mouth, his eyes piercing as blue ice and his perfect lips curved in a shape of disdain. So beautiful, and so close, that Grantaire is only able to tip his cap in what he hopes is an ironic gesture of salute, and then leave only to casually return ten minutes later.

But the memory of the face not five inches away from his own persists, and that night he slides into tangled dreams of Enjolras, of his fingers and his mouth and his thighs, of limbs sliding over each other in the darkness and red lips whispering things that might be obscenities and might be endearments. He awakens with heavy breathing in a soiled bed, his skin flushed and heated and his mind in turmoil.

After a moment he drags himself out of bed, cleans himself up, and then grips the edge of the washbasin and stares at his cracked reflection in the mirror.

Angels do not have a sex drive. They are not, admittedly, incapable of the act itself - Grantaire himself has taken a girl home once or twice to maintain appearances, and found the experience pleasant enough but not entirely interesting. But to actively lust after someone else, to fantasize about roaming hands behind locked doors - He is growing dizzy, his thoughts fragmenting into disjointed shards. To feel such an aching desperate yearning for the pleasures of the flesh - those a purely human things, human, human -

The world tilts and screeches and falls out of joint, like two panes of glass sliding over each other. There is a loud clear ringing in his ears, and his normally intangible wings show up razor sharp in the mirror, flaring and spreading out of his control like some giant menace about to strike him from behind -

It's over in an instant. The room is still and cold, and Grantaire collapses into a chair with his own heartbeat echoing in his ears.

Later that day he drags himself to the Café Musain and sits with his bottle and says nothing. There are perhaps people around him inquiring as to why he is not as vocal as normal, but he does not notice. He sits and stares unseeing at the wall, at Enjolras, and merely thinks. About Falling, and how it's supposed to be a screaming fiery plunge, but instead feels more like a sigh.

•

The panic hits him only the next day, when he wakes up and is hit with a dizzying surge of horrible creeping nausea, the sky outside the window spinning and spinning, and this time he can actually feel a portion of his Grace evaporating -

He tears off the sheets, stumbles out of bed, and falls to his knees and curses the world, curses the heavens, curses his own stupidity and his own emotions until the feeling goes away. When it does, the world has grown a little darker, his limbs a little weaker, and in a determined protestation of the inevitable he snatches a paintbrush, clumsily mixes a few colors, and throws paint onto the canvas in crude, desperate strokes.

After a while of furious painting he steps back, breathing heavily. The canvas is splattered with red and gold, with scattered images of blood and wings and a marble face woven into the chaos. It looks like a scream.

The panic drains out of him, leaving an aching emptiness.

To fall as he is falling is to become human. No more power simmering in his veins, no more ability to see through walls and men and souls alike. No more immortality. He will become one of the masses, another dreary stick figure trudging along this mortal coil - and then he laughs, harsh and terrible, because what has he been doing already? Angel though he may be, his only thought for a while now has been to sink into the cracks and crevices of Paris and disappear.

The world rocks and screams, and another portion of his Grace slips away, and Grantaire barely feels it.

•

Enjolras is arguing with him once again. Grantaire relishes these moments, because a fight is better than neglect, and respect in discord is better than no respect at all.

_But why_, asks Enjolras, and his voice contains the same confused exasperation, _are you here, if you scorn our ideals?_

The same question, every time. Grantaire feels the link between them tugging at his chest, feels the warm human presence of his friends all around him and the bright heat of Enjolras' soul. He shrugs and gives yet another roundabout answer. Really, Enjolras should know by now -

•

He sits on the roof of a church, hidden against the steeple, and lets his wings fan out. They have turned frail and weary, like constructs of parchment paper and glass, slender bones stitched together by raggedl feathers. They lie half in and half out of the real world - seen as perhaps a disturbance in the air from a certain angle, a flash of feathers caught passing by.

The sky is filled with glowing clouds, raindrops falling lazily through the watery light. The world feels like a sigh.

Grantaire feels tired down to his very core, with only half his angelic strength remaining; his vision and hearing have dimmed to an extent that alcohol never managed. And yet his wings are still stretched out behind him, as he overlooks the crucible that Paris has become. One might mistake him for a protector of the whole city. An angel of France. He laughs at that, a quiet chuckle that seeps into the air.

His duty of guidance is towards one man only, and that he is failing at. And then his laugh increases, because he has not been trying very hard, has he? He has watched from a distance, taken in the light, but with Enjolras he argues and mocks, and when true emotion shows through, it is only sorrow that so beautiful a thing can be extinguished so young, and that there is nothing he can do to change it.

He is a failure at everything he does, and the thought somehow causes the laughter to bubble up in great heaving gasps. He laughs and laughs and his sides hurt, and then it stops abruptly.

The emptiness of humanity aches inside of him, and he feels a breeze pass through his feathers. The wings will be the last to go - he knows that the way he knows that the sky is blue and empty, the way he knows that Enjolras will die nailed to a wall by the eight red holes stitched across his chest. He will lose every trace of his angelic power, and then his wings will burn.

•

A death has been announced. The spark has been lit, smoldering and growing under cover of the relentless rain that splatters and thuds onto the cobblestones like a drum.

_I swore to go through fire, not water,_ says Joly. The air is heavy and damp, soaked as though with alcohol waiting to be set alight.

Grantaire supposes the same thing could be said of him. _I prefer breakfast to a hearse_, he says, although the angel instinct that is left in him plucks and tugs him towards Enjolras.

- No, angel instinct has little to do with it.

Feet thunder past the Corinth, and a blonde head flashes by the window. They will build their barricade here.

Grantaire feels Enjolras' impending death heavy and tight in his chest. There are mere hours left, he thinks, numbly, and takes another swig of his drink, unleashes floods of laughter to cover up the dread.

•

_Do not dishonor the barricade_, says Enjolras. He is as disapproving as ever, and Grantaire thinks distractedly, if you knew, if you only knew...

Another wave of dizzying nausea washes over him, this one sluggish and lurching; there is very little Grace left in him. _Let me sleep here_, he says, and sways.

_Go sleep somewhere else_ - Does Enjolras not know that Grantaire cannot leave?

But by the time it will take to sleep off his absinthe and his loss of power, Enjolras will surely be dead. A preemptive bitterness of remorse swells in Grantaire's chest, that he will not be there to perform his final task in easing Enjolras' passing.

_Let me sleep here_ - he tries to convey this apology in his gaze; it mingles with the sorrow he feels for this beautiful boy who will soon be dead - _until I die here_.

_Grantaire, you are incapable of thinking, of believing, of living, of willing, and of dying..._

_You will see_, he says, and dimly he wonders about the last one, about when his immortality will fully leave him. He'd rather it happen sooner than later; he is quite sick of this world, and it is a world that will soon be empty of Enjolras. There is a rushing in his ears, and it is growing louder.

He falls asleep -

•

Dreams come, strange and feverish and restless. The faces of everyone he has ever watched over flash before his eyes, their eyes wide and almost panicked. He thinks he sees their mouths moving, but the image shifts in and of of focus and he cannot read their lips -

Another dream of Enjolras in his bed, but this time his lips move over scars and bruises, the taste of blood on his tongue. They are both frenzied and hungry this night, wanting to feel each other as much as possible before fate strikes -

The bed is empty.

They are in the torn and devastated street, and Enjolras stands on top of the barricade and glows with a radiance that is painful to behold. He was wrong to think of him as half angel, comes the belated thought - angels are benign watchers, and such fierce hope and determination were only ever human -

yet Enjolras has wings now, bleeding into the cold dawn sky like watercolor strokes. He says Grantaire's true name, his angel name that no human tongue can pronounce, and it rings strange and unfamiliar in Grantaire's ears -

Blood begins to trickle from Enjolras' nose, his eyes, the corner of his mouth. Bruises and bloodstains blossom on his body. _Grantaire_, he says, and this name feels right and natural. _Grantaire_ - !

•

He awakes with silence ringing in his ears, and the sensation of the last of his Grace slowly leaking away. The air is heavy with the smell of blood and gunpowder, and he thinks dully, I have failed, they are gone, Enjolras is gone -

A voice.

"Do you wish your eyes blindfolded?"

"No."

And that is _his_ voice. Enjolras, alive - Enjolras, backed against the wall, in front of the muskets -

With an immense effort of will, Grantaire pulls on the power within him slows the loss of his Grace to a trickle. There is one more thing to be done.

He stands up. The world has taken on a beautiful simplicity, the path clear and straight ahead.

_Vive la République_ -

He spreads his parchment wings as he goes to Enjolras' side, draws him into their frail embrace, and those clear blue eyes take in the ragged feathers. Of course he can see them. This is the final act of the guardian angel. There is no surprise in that lovely face, only gentle acceptance.

- ridiculous that he should feel the need to ask permission, but there is a tranquil awe filling his mind and the formality feels right. And as Enjolras takes his hand, slender palm and calloused skin meeting, he summons up the last scraps of his power and sends them into the bloody fingers, freeing his soul.

The last of his Grace gone, his wings go up in flame, momentarily blazing with more savage glory than an archangel's feathers - he hardly feels the pain. Enjolras' smile is calm and radiant, and Grantaire thinks dizzily, how wonderful to die a human, with a warm hand in yours and a smile in your eyes -

The shot rings out. A series of bullets slam into his flesh, tearing through skin and muscle and arteries and beating human heart -

He falls.

In the moment before consciousness slips away into a welcome void, he reflects that the fall really didn't hurt as much as he thought it would

Then nothing.

•

The shop is empty soon afterwards. Were there someone there, and were that someone able to see the slanting layers of reality, they would see a gentle snowfall of charred feathers drifting down to land on the body against the wall. They cover his head and shoulders like a blanket, brushing his skin with the softness of a kiss.

At his feet lies the body of a man who was no less flawed or less beautiful than a human being.

* * *

**Title is from the Florence + The Machine song Cosmic Love. Feedback is much appreciated.**


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